


boy, i want you to be happy

by magnetichearts



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Blood, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, M/M, Relationship Study, Violence, lowkey a character study about the heart so, this is just really fuckin sad at times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:27:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25134622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnetichearts/pseuds/magnetichearts
Summary: There is a scream trapped in his throat.Richie reaches out a shaking hand, presses his lips to Eddie’s blood soaked temple. He tastes blood on his lips, but whether that’s from the open cut on his lips or the crimson liquid dripping down Eddie’s face, he can’t tell.“Come on, Eddie. Stay strong,” he pleads.or; richie's heart has always been tied to eddie's, ever since he was born(title from “youth” by glass animals)
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	boy, i want you to be happy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> hi guys, this was written as a birthday present for a good friend of mine, [zain!](https://lrrytrainor,tumblr.com)! she's amazing. make sure you go check out her tumblr and wish her a happy birthday! 
> 
> zain, this little space is absolutely, not nearly enough for me to tell you how much i love you and what you mean to me. you're beautiful, amazing, one of the best people i know. i can't believe we've only known each other for a year, because it feels like we've known each other forever, but i'm so incredibly glad i get to call you my friend. this present is just a small, small token of my appreciation for you. i hope you like it. i love you so much, and happy birthday! you deserve absolutely everything in the world. ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ 
> 
> ok guys, enjoy!

There is a scream trapped in his throat. 

Richie reaches out a shaking hand, presses his lips to Eddie’s blood soaked temple. He tastes blood on his lips, but whether that’s from the open cut on his lips or the crimson liquid dripping down Eddie’s face, he can’t tell. 

“Come on, Eddie. Stay strong,” he pleads. 

Eddie heaves in a wracking breath, and for a split second, Richie wants to grapple at the stones around them for an inhaler, because god, it sounds just like that, sounds like someone is taking a knife and carving into Eddie’s lungs as he sits here, clutching his hand. 

Eddie’s eyes slip shut. Blood smears over Richie’s glasses as he reaches up to readjust them. 

He can feel the pulse of Eddie’s blood through the wound, through the veins he’s holding together. It beats in tandem with his. It has always beat in tandem with his. 

But this is not the beginning. The only question that remains is whether or not it is the end. 

* * *

Richie was born two months early, a tiny thing, so small he was barely longer than a foot at exactly 13 inches, weighing 2.5 pounds. 

The worrisome part, of course, was what came before. 

Fetal bradycardia. 

At a heart rate of exactly 105 beats per minute, his prognosis was  _ dismal. _

To put that in terms more understandable, fetal bradycardia is when the heartbeat of a fetus is below 100 beats per minute, 120 after 6.3 gestational weeks. It can be caused by any number of things, fetal head compression, umbilical cord occlusion/compression, inadequate maternal gas exchange. 

Richie was found at 6.5 weeks, and at 105 beats per minute, he had a 52% chance of survival. 

When he was born, however, the whole hospital fretted over him, the little baby who was far,  _ far _ too small and had massive eyes, eyes that showed everything. 

His heart beat so slow everyone was worried he would not survive. Sometimes, people have a baseline heartbeat that is simply slower than the average person. This is not something that is unusual. Everyone is different. 

But Richie’s heartbeat wasn’t just slow, wasn’t just a little behind. His heart was lagging. It was beating at a pace all on its own. 

The only saving grace was that there was no arrhythmia occuring. For all that his heart was slow, it was steady. It did not miss one beat. 

And here is the thing about having a slow heartbeat, about it thunking away in your chest. You do not miss a thing. You take in the world in a different way, a way that makes everything seem a little slower, a little quieter, a little more muted. 

Perhaps fast paced was not in the cards for Richie. Perhaps it was not meant to be. Perhaps he was always meant to be a little behind. 

On the first day of kindergarten, he meets Eddie Kaspbrak. 

This happens because Eddie is the only other child in the class who also needs to take medication. Far, far more pills that Richie needs to take, but still, the only other child in the class. 

Eddie is  _ clean, _ in a way Richie, from his home of mud stained shoes and alcohol puddles on the floor, can never be. His white, white shoes scrape against the floor. There is exactly one scuff on them, a long one about the length of his right shoe, the color of the sky when a thunderstorm is about to happen.

Eddie turns to him, and for a brief, visceral second, Richie detests him. Detests his clean clothes and perfect hair, face devoid of mud. 

And then Eddie speaks. “What’s your sickness?” he asks. 

Richie furrows his eyebrows. “What?” 

Eddie’s eyes are the exact same color as the wood on his bed back home. “Why do you gotta take that?” he asks. 

He points to the cabinet, where all the pills are stored. Underneath the table in the nurse’s office, his legs swing back and forth. It makes his chair rock against the linoleum floor, something that irritates Richie.

“Why do you care?” Richie snaps. 

Hurt flashes across Eddie’s face. “I just wanted to see if we take the same things.” 

Richie’s lip curls, and he crosses his arms. “It’s something for my heart.” 

Eddie nods seriously. “Me too. Doctors said mine was too slow when I was born.” 

Richie jerks up straight in his seat. “That’s what they said about mine!” 

Eddie blinks at him, eyes owlishly wide. “That’s so cool,” he whispers. 

Richie shrugs. “Whatever. I don’t care.” 

* * *

He sits on the chair, slumped. 

“It’s fucked up,” he mutters. “What happened to Georgie.” 

Eddie doesn’t say anything. 

“Come on, shithead,” Richie snaps. “Say something.” 

Eddie runs his hand over his face. “We don’t know what happened to Georgie, Richie,” he says tiredly, sounding far, far older than his 12 years, like a certain exhaustion has seeped into the marrow of his bones. 

Richie frowns, and presses his back against the chair. “Still,” he grumbles, crossing his arms. “It’s fucked.” 

“Derry’s always been like that,” Eddie says wistfully. “A messed up town.” 

“Can’t wait to get out of this fucking place,” Richie says. 

Inside his chest, his heart twists, which should not be anatomically possible, but that is what it feels like. He wants to leave this town. 

He doesn’t want to leave the people he cares about behind. 

Richie sets his hand down on the bench, curls it around. He can feel his heart pulse, slow, slow, steady. 

“Me neither.” 

The admission startles him. “You don’t want to stay behind?” 

Eddie shakes his head. “I’m tired of my mother,” he confesses. 

He sets his hand down as well, and his skin just brushes Richie’s.

It’s a lightning bolt that Richie does not allow himself to feel. 

He snorts instead. “Yeah, anyone would get tired of that hag.” 

Eddie says nothing, just smiles, as they wait for everyone else. 

* * *

Richie is sitting cross legged in the middle of the grass when Eddie arrives. 

“Where have you been?” he demands. 

He flops down in the grass, and before, Eddie would have never sat down in the grass, where any measure of macroparasites or diseases could get into his body, where any measure of bugs or bacteria could bother him. 

But bacteria and bugs seem a bit of a lesser concern after you face a murderous being that is trying to consume your town with evil.

“Fuck off,” Richie mutters, pulling at the stands of grass. 

Eddie crosses his arms. “You’re being ridiculous.” 

“I’m not!” Richie explodes. He gets up and throws his hands in the air. “I just don’t get it!” 

“Get what, Richie?” Eddie gets up as well and steps forward. “Things are never going to go back to normal, you know that, right?” 

Richie clenches his jaw. Looks away. 

“Bev  _ left, _ Richie,” Eddie stresses. “This is the first time you or I have seen each other in  _ weeks. _ Bill’s all kinds of fucked up, still. Ben’s dead silent. Mike won’t even look me in the eye, and Stan? Well, Stan’s gone off the rails. Things won’t go back to normal.” 

Logically, Richie knows that Eddie’s right. Things don’t go back to normal after you and your friends vanquish a murdering clown and discover the bodies of  _ hundreds _ of children beneath your town. They just don’t. 

And yet, part of him wants it to. Part of him  _ needs _ it to. He has exactly one thing in his life: his friends. He can’t lose them. He can’t, he can’t, he can’t. 

But he already has. 

Richie huffs and stalks off into the forest, and he can hear the crunch of Eddie’s shoes as he follows him. 

“Richie!” Eddie calls. 

He keeps walking. 

“Richie!” 

Eddie’s hand closes around his wrist. 

Richie stops instantly, whirling around and yanking it out of Eddie’s grasp. “Fucking hell, Eddie, leave me the fuck alone! I don’t want to think about that fucking clown!” 

“You think any of us want to, Richie?” Eddie snaps. “You think any of us want to relive one of the worst days of our fucking lives?” 

Eddie swearing slaps Richie in the face like a bullet. He jerks back as if he’s been sucker punched, staring at him. “You don’t get to pretend like that shit never happened, like we didn’t see a bunch of dead kids floating in the air. It happened. Things won’t ever be normal again. Cool it with the fucking jokes, and learn to live with it.” 

Richie chokes back the question he wants so badly to ask, and clenches his fist. 

“Fine,” he spits. “You want me to leave you all alone? I will.” 

He whirls away and stalks off, deeper, deeper, deeper into the forest, where he can feel the weight of Eddie’s gaze slip off of his back like water slipping over a stone. 

As soon as he feels Eddie’s gaze on him vanish, though, Richie is aware that for the first time in his life (even with the clown, even with the monster) his heart is beating fast. 

* * *

Richie is staring into eyes he has not seen for twenty years, eyes he does not let himself think about. 

Eddie cracks a smile. “Hey, Richie.” 

“Hi,” he manages to say back. He swallows, pushing up his glasses with one finger. 

His heart is pounding away underneath his ribcage, beating at what feels like far too fast a speed. 

Eddie is the only person who has ever been able to make his heart pound like this. 

“Long time, no see, huh?” 

Richie nods. “Yeah.” 

And then everyone else starts talking, starts laughing and then learning about Stan, and the night takes a turn, golden sunlight vanishing behind a dark cloud. 

Later Richie lies in his bed, thinks about Eddie, wonders if his heart still beats slow. He does not know Eddie anymore, does not know the man who is standing in front of him, twenty years and a million miles away. 

But there are parts of Eddie that Richie cannot deny, the parts of them that have always been intertwined, the parts of them that will never be apart. 

The parts that met in kindergarten and splashed through the Barrens together, that jumped into a quarry and fought off a clown. 

These are the parts of them that Richie feels connected to, the island in a hurricane he latches onto.

But those are also the parts of them that he and Eddie bury deep, never to be dredged up again.

* * *

There is so much  _ blood. _

“No, no, no,” Richie moans. 

Bev gasps behind him, but the only person Richie cares about is Eddie. 

He clutches Eddie’s wrist tighter, feels his heart pulse against Richie’s fingers. Slow, exactly the same as Richie’s. Slow, and getting weaker, and weaker, and weaker. 

“You can’t do this, Eddie,” he manages to choke out. “You gotta live. I lost Stan, and I’m not losing you too.” 

Eddie’s eyes flutter open, and for a second Richie wonders if they would be the same color as his bed back home now. 

Where is home now?

“No sarcastic quips?” Eddie coughs out.

“Didn’t think this was the best time,” Richie breathes. 

Eddie’s eyes flutter, and then lock on his. “Richie,” he breathes. “It’s gonna be ok.”

This is so fucking fucked up this is not right not right not  _ right. _ Why is Eddie the one comforting him, when he’s the one bleeding out? Why can Richie feel tears mingling with the blood on his face? 

It’s fucked up that he has a hand pressed to Eddie’s wound and he can feel his heart, can feel his pulse weaken, getting threadier and threadier by the second. This is not what is supposed to happen. They are not supposed to end here, end in this stupid fucking place with this clown.

Eddie cannot die here. He  _ can’t. _

Eddie sighs, his body curving into the ground. 

“Richie,” he whispers. 

Richie clutches Eddie’s hand, focuses on his heartbeat, and prays for a miracle. 

**Author's Note:**

> your comments and kudos make me happier than richie throwing rocks! come talk to me about the movies! you can find me on tumblr: @[parkersedith](https://parkersedith.tumblr.com)


End file.
